Vegetation has been a key part of the Earth's surface for only about 450 million years. With the progression of the terrestrial landscape from bare surfaces to widespread coverage by plants ...

The spot may have served as a refugium–or life oasis–for terrestrial plants during the end-Permian mass extinction, when 80 to 90 percent of life on Earth was wiped out about 252 million years ...

For palaeontologists like us, they are a vast archive of past life on Earth. In particular, they can tell us how life on land fared during times when the climate warmed suddenly. Our new study showed ...